Will governments make tobacco industry pay for all the harms it causes?
SHOBHA SHUKLA - CNS
"How can we allow the tobacco industry to fill its coffers while we the people have to empty our pockets to fend for and suffer all the harms tobacco industry has caused? It is high time to shift the financial burden from people and communities to the tobacco industry for ALL the harms caused by its businesses," said Shobha Shukla while opening the launch of the historic Global Week of Action to Make Big Tobacco Pay.
"No matter where we live or what we look like, everyone deserves to lead a healthy life. But the tobacco industry sells dangerous and deadly products at huge profits. Meanwhile, we all pay - with our lives, our taxes, and our environment," said Daniel Dorado, tobacco campaign director at Corporate Accountability and organiser of the Make Big Tobacco Pay coalition (and a winner of this year's prestigious World Health Organization (WHO)'s World No Tobacco Day Award).
Many people know that tobacco use kills approximately 8 million people each year worldwide and is a risk factor for many life-altering diseases including heart disease, stroke, cancer, diabetes, and TB. Every disease and untimely death caused by tobacco and nicotine products could have been prevented. Even one tobacco death is a death too many.
But few people realise that the tobacco industry also costs society over USD $1.4 trillion every year to treat these preventable diseases and to clean up the industry's toxic pollution. Cigarette butts, which are made of plastic, are the most littered item in the world; e-cigarette waste continues to grow; and both products leach toxic chemicals into our water and soil.
Meanwhile, tobacco corporations bring in nearly USD $1 trillion in revenue from addicting people to products they know are dangerous and deadly. That's more than Google, Meta, and Apple combined.
"If we only clean 'downstream', the industry gets profit and communities get all the pollution, clean-up costs, and health harms. This is not an accident; it is a business model - one that privatises the profits and socialises the harm," said Willow Najjar Anderson, Senior Staff Attorney at th Public Health Law Center.
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